Tag Archive: GoodReads

I’m not going to mention any names here. The purpose of this post isn’t to ball out anyone specific or be mean. But yes, obviously I have someone in particular in mind when I write about the subject matter of today.

Typically indie authors aren’t media or marketing gurus. It’s just not in our nature. But to be a successful indie author, we have to learn some marketing techniques and do our best to be our own PR guy. It’s not always fun but it’s what we must do for our books to be a success.

But there comes a time when maybe we cross that line from being a marketing genus to being a little creepy and if you do that, it could cost you some fans.

If you are lucky and write a great book that people love and more over fall in love with the characters of the book, you want to build on that and maybe you will do even better and hit big with a successful trilogy featuring those beloved characters.

That’s great! That’s beyond great … that’s freaking fantastic! That’s what we all strive for. But when you are done with those books and some time has passed, is it really a good idea to continue on with those characters or just let them die out as you work on your next series of books?

Let me be more specific … I once read a great triology that featured a male character that everyone loved and swooned over. Some people were like omg he’s my favorite book boyfriend. Okay so the author started pushing promotion of this character, I assume to further her sales of the trilogy.

Then I noticed she started having items made up featuring quotes from the book. Okay not bad. Then having items made about that character in general. Then all of the sudden it went a little further and the character suddenly had a facebook page all his own. Next thing I know I read happy birthday (character’s name). Suddenly this fake character from a book was celebrating his birthday in real life?

This got me looking at the author’s own facebook page and I counted more than 32 different little items she had made up – various products with the guys name on it or about his character in the book. 32? Really?

The books have been out for a long time now and the author in question hasn’t released a single NEW book in well more than a year. This whole time all she’s talked about was this fake male character from her last book. And for Christmas she wrote a short story about him.

It was all just so creepy and really made me wonder about the mental stability of the author and quite honestly I even stopped following her on Facebook and Goodreads over it. She didn’t seem to get that the time for this character had long since passed. Marketing is wonderful but there comes a time when you need to move on and write a new book already.

So the point I’m trying to make is, there comes a time when you can cross the line from smart marketing to mentally unstable. It’s just creepy the way she posts as him and wishes him happy thanksgiving and merry Christmas like he’s real. It’s not like the books came out last month or even 6 months ago.

So before you decide to develop some sort of marketing campaign you should really stop and ask yourself … is this brilliant or am I just being way to attached to fictional people?

Because if you do it wrong then those marketing efforts could end up costing you fans instead of getting you new ones.

This is not one of those ethical conversations about the merits of buying a book review. There are more than enough sites that debate this subject to death.

This article is to answer the question, “How do you buy a book review?” And the answer is simple … there is pretty much nothing you can’t buy at http://www.Fiverr.com for $5.

Fiverr was started in 2009 and has become the largest market place for all kind of things for $5. There really isn’t much you can’t get there including book reviews, positive ratings on book review sites and more.